Songs That Piss Me Off

Uploaded 06/13/2009

This list was originally posted back in November. I've since added two more. Someone actually named one of the new additions in a comment, but I unfortunately can't remember who...Ironic, since a lot of these songs piss me off, because they're examples of hacks ripping off other peoples' ideas.

"Why Don't You Get a Job" by The Offspring - The Offspring used to be a great, high energy band. Then in the late nineties, they released a song called "Pretty Fly for a White Guy". It was amusing to anyone that was tired of kids from the suburbs trying to act gangsta, but it was a far cry from their former material. I had hoped they'd go back to their old style, but soon songs like "She's Got Issues" and "Why Don't You Get a Job" followed. The reason why the latter sticks out as the worst is because its melody is a blatant ripoff of "Ob La Di, Ob La Da" by the Beatles.

"Counting Blue Cars" by Dishawalla - The first time I heard the song I was actually paying attention to the lyrics. It starts off with the singer talking about spending time with a child (who is presumably dying of a serious disease) after he asked the singer questions about God. He sings about walking around with this child he just met, asking other strangers their thoughts on God. At this point I'm thinking "Okay, singing about how good you are with children and and amusedly reflecting about how they have so many questions is a pretty transparent attempt at getting as many groupies as possible". Then I heard the chorus sing "Tell me all your thoughts on God, because I'd really like to meether," and I thought "Wow, that's shameless!" Basically this song is to sex-addicted musicians what a rear-windowless van with candy and teddy bears spilling over into the front cab is to a child molester.

"I Would do Anything for Love (but I Won't do That)" by Meatloaf - Everyone has had that overplayed song that they couldn't stand, but everyone else loved for some reason. "I Would do Anything for Love (but I Won't do That)" is that song for me. I remember changing the dial between three of my favorite radio stations, and to my dismay found they were all simultaneously playing that damn song. It didn't help that it's about 45 minutes in length.

"Naked in the Rain" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Chili Peppers have been my favorite band since I was a fifth grader and my brother smuggled home a copy of Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik. It's my favorite album of all time, but one song keeps it from being the perfect album, and that is "Naked in the Rain". Sure, it has a sick bass solo, but other than that is a very blah song among 16 other masterpieces. What makes it worse is that it's not like they didn't have worthy alternatives to put in the number 12 slot on this album. Imagine how great "Soul to Squeeze" would fit in between "Under the Bridge" and "Apache Rose Peacock". They had "Sikamikanico", "Soul to Squeeze", "Fela's Cock", and their cover of the Stooges' "Search and Destroy", to choose from, and those were all awesome songs. Why "Naked in the Rain"? Why make me use my Skip Track button on what should be the perfect album?

"Shadow" by Ashlee Simpson - This is a really sad attempt to sound angst riddled by a blond teenage girl who's producer was obviously coaching her to write about something painful in their life in an attempt to make a career that's more processed than a two-pound cube of government cheese sound like there's a bit of soul to it. You know what? Do your pop princess act, but stick to the bubblegum, happy stuff, because you sound like a putz when you design your songs to try and make it seem like you're so affected by your sister getting more attention than you. When Robert Johnson sang the blues, you'd never hear him sing a line about pain that ended with "but it's all cool now".

"Over and Over" by Nelly and Tim McGraw - Another one of those overplayed numbers. The thing that's different about this one is that nobody seemed to like it, and yet it still stayed in constant rotation for months! The only reason it was played every 30 seconds on every music network is because it was a collaboration of two A-list stars from two very different genres: Hip hop and country. It was an incredibly dull and repetitive song to begin with, but the hype just made it that much worse.

"Come with Me" by Puff Daddy - Puff Daddy's always pissed me off anyway, always "sampling"(ripping off) other people's work in a way that isn't even creative. His idea of sampling is playing someone else's song in the background and saying "Uh uh, yeah yeah, here we go" with a voice that sounds like an underachiever giving a mandatory report for his science class on the mating habits of sponges because it's his only hope of staying out of Summer school. The thing that sets this song apart from the rest is that he used "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin, which is not only one of my favorite songs, but it's also a powerful sounding song. Its intensity can not even come close to being matched by P. Diddy's slurred delivery. It's not even a matter of trying to transfer hip hop sensibilities onto a hard rock sound. Can you imagine Diddy trying to cover L.L. Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out"? That wouldn't work either. The guy sounds like he's half asleep.

"Hungry Heart" by Bruce Springsteen - The only real reason this song pisses me off is because I can't help but love it, despite the fact that it's based on some asshole that decided to disappear from his wife and kids' lives one night because he "had a hungry heart".

"Lazy Day" by Spanky and Our Gang - If you took the music played during a scene montage of Ward Cleaver's day at work and mashed it together with Carol Brady's theme while running errands and overlayed it with 60's flower power children repetitively singing "Laaaaazyyy Daaaaaaay" in varying keys, you'd have this song. Puke.

"Massachusetts" by The Bee Gees - Just dislike this song because it's boring, and the lead singer of my band insists on playing it because we're all from Massachusetts. There's no arguing either, because like most other lead singers, he's prone to temper tantrums when things don't go his way...and he owns his own P.A. system.

"That Don't Impress me Much" by Shania Twain - Not impressed by a rocket scientist that looks like Brad Pitt and drives a sweet car? Prepare to die all alone then. People with ridiculous standards piss me off.

"American Idiot" by Green Day - Singing a song that basically repeats everything you've ever heard from a Michael Moore movie and making it rhyme does not make you punk. Green Day is about as punk as Hot Topic, but somehow always gets labeled as such. Ironic how this song basically digs at people that are weak-minded and susceptible to propaganda, but does nothing but echo the sentiments of MTV service announcements and 9 out of 10 of your daily news providers, and markets it to a young, impressionable audience...is that not propaganda in and of itself? I suppose I could buy the album "American Idiot", but I could get the same effect by buying a parrot and an Al Franken book on tape and having it listen to it all day. At least then I'd have a parrot. Those things are sweet.

"All Summer Long" by Kid Rock - I can remember my first reaction to hearing this song on the radio. It was something like "I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his ha- ...What?? ........oh, FUCK YOU!!!" I hate Kid Rock. I'm not a fan of hip hop in general. There's a few exceptions, but largely I think it's boring and repetitive...and Kid Rock added enough of a rock sound to his brand of hip hop to allow his music to become the double agent infiltrating every single one of my favorite radio stations, making sure that every time he releases a new, shitty, shameless rippoff song, I can't avoid it without switching off the radio for six months. He ripped off two classic rock songs that I love: "Sweet Home Alabama" by Skynrd, and even more so "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon. It was worse than the time he ripped off "Sad But True" by Metallica. If by any chance there's some classic rock heroes that kill time on the blog section here at eBaum's World (lol), should you get a call from a hip hop artist asking to sample your song, just say "no". Doing it won't make you new and fresh again, it'll just piss off the fans you have. Is it worth the royalty check to have your song raped like that? If they don't ask permission, sue the pants that are already halfway down their ass off of them. Hopefully, it'll be a deterrant in the future.

"Bad Girlfriend" by Theory of a Deadman - Obviously from a few songs I've mentioned here, it's easy to pick up that I hate ripoffs. I loathe people that erase someone else's name from the paper, write in their own, turn it in, and reap the reward. This song is a flat out ripoff of "Fire Woman" by The Cult. It's even worse than hip hop sampling, because they change it around just enough to make it unrecognizable to the casual listener, and try and pass that shit off as their own idea. Adding a couple new progressions, and changing lyrics and distortion type on the guitar works remarkably well on fooling most people. It just disturbs me, because kids today are gonna hear that song, not know about The Cult, and give these assholes too much credit. Obviously, everyone has their own influences, and you're going to be able to hear that come through. It's also disturbing because it makes me wonder how many songs of my generation that I love are guilty of the same thing. Unfortunately, I hypothesize that the number is appalling. I hate Theory of a Deadman for bringing this realization to me. They can rot in obscurity, if there's such a thing as karma.